81.3% Open Shop

The study of union, non-union and open shop labor conditions that Vice President Staunton B. Peck of the Link-Belt Co. concluded last week for the National Association of Manufacturers, naturally hoped to put a rosy lacquer on the open shop principle of employing labor, that is, of making no discrimination against union or non-union labor, just so that the union organizations do not pester the employers.

Mr. Peck's committee analyzed the employment records of 187,390 U. S. manufacturing plants, employing 8,383,261 wage earners. Building, mining and transportation industries were ignored. Their millions of workers are almost entirely unionized, and their inclusion in the National Association of Manufacturers' statistics would distort the open shop picture. _ Nonetheless, Mr. Peck's findings were significant. In the industries investigated only 13.7% of the plants employed only union help, and these people comprised only 7.4% of those employed in all the especially picked factories. Non-union factories numbered 11.%, their employes 11.3% There remained the shining open shop plants--74.4%, with employes--81.3% of the gross total.